Floods/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim & Moby. A boy, Tim, and a robot, Moby, stand on the stairs and survey their flooded basement, TIM: We have to get my comic books out of here. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Ah right, and your collection of non-famous autographs. Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, How do floods happen? From, Tom. TIM: Floods happen when normally dry areas of land get soaked with water. MOBY: Beep. An animation shows rain falling on the ground. TIM: No, you're right. Water is good for the earth, and land can usually absorb whatever water falls on it. But, like a sponge, land has its limit. It can only absorb so much water. Land is flooded when it's been hit with more water than it can hold. A split image shows a sponge on one side, and layers of land on the other side. An animation shows water flowing into the sponge and the land. The land overflows after it reaches its absorption limit. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, floodwater comes from a bunch of different sources, including rivers, lakes, and the ocean. Images show a river, a lake, and an ocean. TIM: Too much rain can cause a river to flood the surrounding plain. An animation shows rain causing a river to flood. TIM: And heavy storms, like hurricanes, can sometimes cause flooding and storm surges: waves that can be over twenty feet high! An animation shows a huge ocean wave. TIM: Much of the damage caused by hurricane Katrina in 2005 was from the massive storm surge off the Gulf of Mexico. Storm surge flooding can be caused by other things too, like tides and earthquakes. An image shows people using a row boat to get around in a flooded street. MOBY: Beep. An image shows people running on land to escape from giant waves coming toward them. TIM: Yeah, the 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands in southeast Asia started with a huge earthquake in the Indian ocean. Floods are one of the most common natural disasters around the world. Every year, floodwaters kill and sicken thousands of people. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well think about it. If you have water washing over everything in a town, there's gonna be nasty stuff in there: garbage, sewage, dead animals, and plenty of germs. An animation shows garbage and a dead bird floating in floodwaters. TIM: Flooded areas often have to deal with the spread of disease. Contaminated floodwaters can poison drinking water, too. An animation shows water flowing from a faucet. The water turns from clear to cloudy and brown. TIM: On top of that, floods can shut down electric grids, destroy farmlands and buildings, cause landslides, and make transportation almost impossible. Animations illustrate the things Tim describes. MOBY: Beep. TIM: There are ways that we can avert disaster. We know that floods are most likely to happen in low-lying areas near large bodies of water. And they're common in the spring, when heavy rains combine with water from melting snow. So, to keep a river from flooding, people build levees, or dikes, along their banks. A levee is basically an embankment built on a river's edge. An animation shows land that dips down below the water’s surface. Rain makes the water level rise. A levee tries to prevent flooding. TIM: Dams can control the flow of water, too. But once in a while a dam will burst, sending a deadly wall of water and debris down a river's path. Animations illustrate what Tim describes. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Actually, dam bursts have caused some of the worst floods in history. People who live near the ocean can protect themselves from surges with sand dunes and seawalls, which are just walls built on the shore. A split image shows sand dunes on one side and seawalls on the other side. TIM: The entire country of the Netherlands is practically surrounded with a complex system of seawalls, dikes, and other flood barriers. A map of the Netherlands shows its border along the North Sea and the flood barriers Tim describes. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, there are some things you can do at home to prepare for floods. Make sure your family has a disaster kit ready, including jugs of water, a flashlight, a portable radio, batteries, and first aid supplies. Images illustrate the things Tim describes. TIM: And don't keep valuables anywhere in your house that's likely to get flooded. Tim hangs his Mister Destructo magazine on a clothesline. TIM: Oh, my Mister Destructo number thirty-one is ruined. Moby hangs a paper on the clothesline that has Tim's autograph written on it.Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Science Transcripts